Operational building blocks for business process modelling

The modelling of business processes is a rather complex, difficult and therefore time-consuming process. The efficiency of this process can be significantly enhanced by employing reusable building blocks, rather than to describe business processes from scratch every time a model is being created or modified. The paper describes a reference model which identifies a set of generic building blocks needed for enterprise modelling and identifies their relationships. Further specialisation of these generic building blocks into a profession and/or industry branch oriented set enables business people to model their processes with a minimum requirement on IT know-how. The CIMOSA concepts and language have been selected as the basis for the reference model. Since CIMOSA is one of the basic concepts recognised in the relevant standardisation work, the presented approach also obeys very closely the relevant European and international standards.